The present invention relates to a handheld, portable thermal-cauterizing forceps including an integrated thermal heating surface disposed at each tip.
There are many surgical cautery devices available for the surgeon to ablate and vaporize tissue. Hot knives and cutting coagulators have been used to make skin incisions. The cautery can also be used in surgery to aid in hemostasis or control bleeding by coagulating blood vessels. Employing various cautery modalities decreases the duration of some surgical procedures by providing the surgeon a rapid method of coagulation without the need for suture ligation of blood vessels encountered during dissection.
Typically, surgical cautery is accomplished by directing a heating process onto tissue. The heat may be generated by either a thermal or electro-surgical process. Most commonly, an electro-surgical process using a radio frequency (RF) is used. The RF units generate heat by using high frequency electrical current and the resistive nature of tissue to produce heat. This technique requires a bulky generator and heavy electrical components to operate. Typically, RF electrocautery units require a power lead cable to the electro-surgical hand instrument and a large surface area grounding pad. More often than not, radio frequency surgical units are bulky expensive units which require a cable connection. Employing RF cauterization in a surgical operation may add significant cost to the procedure because the grounding pad, cable and handpiece must all be either re-sterilized or replaced in the case of disposable use.
A less common method of generating heat for coagulation of tissue is by thermal cautery. Thermal cautery is achieved by electrical heating of a resistive-wire loop or resistible electronic part by applying an electrical voltage. The prior art describes many handheld disposable, hot-wire loop cautery instruments. These devices have severe limitations as to their scope of use in surgery. The heat generated by the handheld battery powered devices is very small with a low heat capacity. The available patented devices are effective for cauterization of only the smallest of blood vessels, such as, vessels in the sclera of the eye. These battery powered hot-wire cautery instruments are not effective for use in cauterization of larger blood vessels encountered in most surgical procedures. A technique employing the electrical over driving of a zener diodes to produce heat has also been described in several patents. This device is primarily for limited endoscopic applications.